


Saying Yes

by HixyStix (GaiaMyles)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Claire Hates Castiel Except Not Really, Gen, Risky Behavior, Suicidal Ideation, Vessel Fic, self-delusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 02:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GaiaMyles/pseuds/HixyStix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is eleven when her father says yes and the angel takes him from her.</p>
<p>She is twelve when the angel takes her and discards her. The angel walks away with her father's face, her mother's trust, and her innocence.</p>
<p>Claire Novak is eighteen and she knows what it means to say yes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saying Yes

Claire Novak knows about saying yes.

She is eleven when her father says yes and the angel leaves with him. She is twelve when the angel takes her. Then, like her father, he discards her. The angel walks away - again - with her father’s face, her mother’s trust, her innocence.

She knows her father was not sick, did not run off with a secret lover, wasn’t mugged and left for dead while in Chicago, no matter what classmates and neighbors conjecture. No, he chose to leave them. He said yes.

Claire knows what it means to say yes.

 

Claire also knows about lying.

She knows not to tell youth group leaders she believes in a God who exists but doesn’t care anymore. (Neither does Claire.) She goes to church, goes on mission trips, sings in the Christmas service, but she stays out of discussions.

She knows about hiding Those Books from her mother, who would object not only to the subject matter but the cover art. (Thank goodness for her Kindle.) She reads the ones that Alyssa swears are elaborate fanfiction and never says that she knows better. She never lets on how grateful she is that Carver Edlund changed the names of her family members. She comes close to outing herself in a message board flame war over whether or not the angel is essentially a hero or a villain, but she thinks she was able to disguise her slipup as character analysis. Certainly, that queen_of_moons person shut up afterwards and that’s really all Claire wanted.

She feigns ignorance when she is sixteen and her father’s face shows up on television screens, in stained glass windows, in eyewitness accounts after that weird New Age place burns, in the stories of miracles and massacres that begin to pour in from around the globe. Amelia wants to pretend this never happens; Claire can’t blame her.

Amelia also does not want to know that Claire still talks to the angel. She certainly would not want to know the vulgarities Claire screams at him, how Claire begs for him to come to her, to give back her father, to take her again. He never answers anyhow, so Claire doesn’t think her mother needs to know.

She does not tell anyone about the joint she smokes behind the bleachers with Kyle after homecoming. Claire doesn’t intend to repeat it – the high felt too much like the angel was back inside her and she never wants to feel that again. Never.

Claire knows about lying to herself best of all.

 

So when Hannah calls three days after Claire’s eighteenth birthday, asking if Claire wants to get away for the summer because the camp she works at needs more counselors on short notice, Claire says sure. (Not yes.) It takes some convincing for her mother to agree, but Claire leaves the next morning. Short notice is short notice, after all.

When the camp director asks her if she’d like to work at the climbing tower, Claire says fine. (But not yes.) She knows only a little about rock climbing – childhood scrambles up mountainsides while hiking with her father, a few birthday parties at indoor gyms – but Claire is a quick learner and her coworkers are good teachers. She learns to rig and to harness, to belay and to rappel. She learns that as a skinny, lightweight girl, she has a big speed advantage over the boys in racing up the wall – and there is power in that discovery. She learns that thirteen year old boys will fall over themselves to show off for her and that her male coworkers act rather a lot like those same thirteen year olds when she challenges them to contests of any sort.

She also learns the thrill of falling, of being forty feet off the ground and letting go. The rope catches her every time, cinched tight by her belayer, but for a few glorious milliseconds, she is falling free and hoping that maybe this time, the rope won’t catch her.

That’s a thought she keeps to herself.

It doesn’t stop Claire from bringing it to mind, relishing in it, every time she stands at the edge of a rock face or atop the climbing walls. She is an amateur, mistakes happen, it would be easy… Or would it? Would the angel even let her fall? (He let her mother get possessed, let demons tie her up, let her father get shot.) He might not respond to his castoff vessel when she begs, but he might be swayed to protect her life.

As if she really wants him to come save her.

She laughs with her coworkers as they check the equipment for damage every night, with Hannah over worse-than-school-cafeteria camp food, with Emily and Alexis in her cabin long after they should be asleep. She sneaks out to the challenge course after dark with Hannah and Tyler and Josh and falls on her butt trying to climb a rope. She stays up late and watches the stars with her area director, Joe – a former hippie with facial hair straight out of Duck Dynasty. He thinks he’s far funnier than he actually is, but he does know more about constellations than anyone she ever met.

Well, nearly anyone.

When Joe tells her she’s beautiful and kisses her, Claire lets him. She can’t say she’s enthusiastic about losing her virginity on the hood of her car to a man twice her age, but she isn’t opposed to the idea, so when he asks if he can take off her shirt, she nods. (Still not yes.) The sex is entirely unimpressive, at least for her - Joe seemed to enjoy it – but she doesn’t really see what the big deal is. She zips her jeans back up and idly wonders if this makes her unsuitable as a vessel. (Nobody tried to stop her.)

She’s out behind the dining hall with Josh, trading puffs of his cigarette, when the meteor shower begins. The assembly field begins to fill with campers and counselors watching the sky, in awe of the unexplained show.

Not Claire. She heads to the lake, through the trees.

She knows. She can’t say how she knows, but she knows. Something inside her flares in recognition as the sky lights up. Those aren’t meteors. Those aren’t fragments breaking off as they hit the atmosphere; those are wings.

She finds him rising from the lake, all light and power and broken grace. His voice is nearly overwhelming, filling her with fire and static and an ache she has never acknowledged. She knows what he wants from her, knows what this will do to her mother, knows this is what her father wanted to avoid. Claire also knows it’s a lie to say she really cares anymore.

It’s not _the_ angel. But it is _an_ angel.

Claire says yes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Anica for looking over this on short notice! (And now, much later, thanks to GreyMichaela for properly beta-ing all my work!)
> 
> As with everyone who writes her, I'm guessing at Claire's age - if she were 12 in season four, then she'd be 18 in season nine, taking into consideration the lost year between seasons five and six.
> 
> Should you be interested, my tumblr is hixystix, but thanks to limited Internet access, I'm more active lately on Twitter as @iamafannibal.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Saying Yes [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3663597) by [litrapod (litra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litrapod)




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